From Robert Heinlein:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
[Via Instapundit]
This is why we need robust space launch. Then when the inmates complete taking over the asylum, we can be driven right off the planet and say “Sayonara, suckers!!”
Even if a few hundred people a year (which may take some time to achieve) were the norm for space colonization, that still leaves a lot of good people stuck in the asylum.
I’ve always like Heinlein’s (via Lazarus Long) advice on voting.
Even if a few hundred people a year (which may take some time to achieve) were the norm for space colonization, that still leaves a lot of good people stuck in the asylum.
No reason that a few hundred people a year will be the “norm”.
Sadly we’re a long way from having 1 person a year living ever thereafter away from and independent of Earth. Maybe within half a century, maybe not.
Maybe The One is part of the necessary groundwork, HH. Remember, people did not flee Europe in rickety leaky boats to the New World (where maybe half of them died in the first year) until they found the circumstances of life in the Old Country just intolerable.
There’s a gap of more than 100 years between when the New World was discovered and when it was seriously colonized, a gap that is explained by the steady curtailment over that century of individual liberty and conscience produced by the Counter-Reformation and the consolidation of the central power of absolute monarchies in England and France.